Allan Hoffman

I haven’t actually gotten a chance yet to try out iMovie for the iPhone 4, but I’m looking forward to it. I’m a fan of iMovie on the Mac, and I’m also a fan of the idea of moviemaking right on the iPhone—that is, using the iPhone for the whole shebang. Shooting video. Editing video. Adding titles, transitions, and other effects. I’ve used the excellent app ReelDirector for this—and that’s still a great choice, especially if you don’t have an iPhone 4—but I’m really excited about Apple diving into this arena with iMovie.

Here’s an example of a movie made with the iPhone and iMovie:

“Apple of My Eye” – an iPhone 4 film from Michael Koerbel on Vimeo.

I’m usually pretty low-tech when I head out to the great outdoors. For running, I’ve got a Timex Ironman watch; it can register 100 splits/laps, but that’s nothing compared to all of the GPS and heart-rate monitors for runners. For hiking, well, I don’t really take any technology, aside from my phone, and I use that mainly for capturing images for my photoblog. But plenty of people do love to geek out with technology when they’re hiking, cycling, and whatnot, and I wrote about some of these in a recent column.

I’ve been thinking (and writing) about the iPad a lot these days. I got one on Saturday morning (yes, perhaps the most uber-nerd thing I’ve ever done—that is, waiting on line for the iPad), and then set off to use it, test it, and write about it, all by 4:30 p.m. That column, with my initial thoughts, appeared promptly online at NJ.com and the next day in The Star-Ledger. Then I used it over the next several days, and I basically ended up trying to answer the question a lot of people want to know: Should I buy one? I answered “no,” though it’s a no with many, many caveats, as I actually love the iPad, and I do think, as I wrote back in January, when it was announced, that it’s likely to transform our ideas of what computers can and should be.